Hot Men Hub

We've all been there: we were introduced to that really good looking guy at a party or at the club or some other social setting, and even though he was hotter than a rooster in socks the more he talked the more turned off you got as it became clear that he was kind of a self-focused ass. According to a study at Brunel University London this isn't just happenstance. Rather, attractive men as a whole tend to be more selfish.

The study, titled "Bodily Attractiveness and Egalitarianism are Negatively Related in Males" and published in Evolutionary Psychology, took 125 male and female participants, scored them on generalized attractiveness measures, and then took part in an economics experiment where they were asked to share money with someone else. The results found that men who were ranked as more attractive tended to have a bias towards selfishness. The research also found that attractiveness was at least as important as wealth when it came to attitudes of altruism and egalitarianism. Interestingly, the same was not true for women.

Here at Towleroad we’re no strangers to ogling the occasional attractive man reading a book, rapping, or just sort of pretending to be gay. We’ve got an entire tag dedicated to “HOT MEN” because hotness as a concept is both as newsworthy as it is purely objective. Right? According to new research published in Advances and Consumer Research, that logic is somewhat flawed.

Our general perceptions of what’s hot and what’s not, it turns out, have less to do with our own inherent aesthetic preferences and are heavily influenced by what we perceive to be socially acceptable. The study, entitled "Instantaneously Hotter: the Dynamic Revision of Beauty Assessment Standards,” drew upon photos and “hotness ratings” from HotOrNot.com.

Participants in the study were instructed to rank other people’s photographs. Occasionally after giving a numerical score, participants would be allowed to see how other people ranked them, though not every time. As Jesse Singal writes for NY Mag’s Science of Us blog, the study focused on the ways in which people ranked others’ hotness after they were allowed to see the decisions that other people had made:

"The researchers found that when people saw ratings after making their own judgement, in subsequent judgments they got closer and closer to other people's overall average rating of that photo. In other words — and I'm making up the specific numbers — if on the first photo they ranked they were off by 2 points on a 10-point scale as compared to the average, by the 20th photo they were off by, on average, 1.25 points."

Beauty, it turns out, isn’t as in the eye of the beholder as we might think to believe. The study’s findings can be interpreted in a number of different ways, but it’s important to keep in mind the specific circumstance under which the results were found. It’s not often that you’ll have a numerical representation of the public’s hotness score of another person. Thinking that the whole of your sexual attraction to another person is entirely skewed by societal expectations is a rather depressing thought, to be sure, but this isn’t exactly the first time that this idea has been substantiated with numbers.

Let's say you're the literary type and like your men to be well-read in addition to possessing prowess in bed. Should this be the case, the Instagram account you want to follow is @HotDudesReading. The newly formed account has already racked up over 34,000 followers with just 9 posts, all of which are stalker pics of inordinately attractive men riding (or waiting for) public transportation in New York City while reading a book -- not a kindle or an iPad but an actual book. Each post comes complete with musings about what each hottie is reading, thinking about and where he's headed.

For instance, the above photo is captioned:

Spotted this scruffy prince on his morning commute. Probably to sculpture class. I'm sure he's reading a collection of post-war Russian short stories, but really thinking of how he made love to his French girlfriend this morning and the gluten free toast they shared after. #marryme #hotdudesreading

Dapper Dude Alert! Damn. Whatever prose he's reading cannot match the beauty of that full beard. He's like the hot English professor of my dreams, only with way better hair. #voluntarydetention#hotdudesreading - this ones for @lancebass

“I was inspired by the use of the word ‘clean’, especially common in gay culture, to describe oneself as STI/STD free. Indirectly this implies that HIV-positive people are somehow ‘dirty’”, says Mackenroth about the campaign which he kicked off this week with his own sudsy selfie. It's all part of a two-pronged effort he hopes will remove the stigma of HIV while also raising money for AIDS care and research through donations to Housing Works.

Mackrenroth has set up a page on the Housing Works website where you can donate directly to the campaign, which he hopes will raise one million dollars. While it's a lofty goal, it could happen if it takes off like this summer's ALS challenge which went super-viral and ended up netting over 100 million for the Lou Gehrig's disease charity. Mackenroth is working with the gay social app Moovz where people can post their pics, or just use their own accounts on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

British hunk Robert Kazinsky made quite the debut since his first "True Blood" episode, filming a hot and heavy man-on-man shaving scene with Ryan Kwanten this week and a passionate makeout sesh with Anna Paquin--as her husband and costar Stephen Moyer watched.

Toofab caught up with the actor at the premiere for Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim"--Kazinsky plays one of the pilots of the film's giant robots--to ask about the filming the intimate scenes. Not surprisingly, it turns out it's much less sexy filming such material than it is watching it.

"That was one of the hardest things I've ever shot in my life," Kazinsky told toofab, "solely because we couldn't keep a straight face. Not for one second." We're sure you couldn't, Rob.

Check out toofab's video interview with Kazinsky, plus the "True Blood" scene in question, AFTER THE JUMP...